


Discovery

by cariandra



Series: The Gift [1]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:33:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cariandra/pseuds/cariandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seraphi Abrasax learns she has recurred on a harvest planet.  Her reaction is not what everyone expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discovery

“The gene-print has been confirmed, my lady,” Seraphi looks up from her seated position to Iridis, her assistant, the words only just filtering through the haze a single picture has wrought.

“Earth? A tersie?” the air feels as if it has been punched from her lungs. Her fingers travel over the sheave as she looks at the young woman, more girl than woman really, throwing a black bag into a trash can in a dirty alley. A white bandage wraps around the woman's arm, stark against the filth she occupies, a byproduct of their inferior medical technology.

Strange, how one picture can express so much innocence, naivety. Had she looked like that once?

No, she had never worn that look of saddened resolve hidden behind a brave face. Or had she?

“No legal birth records, which explains why we missed her until now. Keepers have been following her ever since the hospital visit eight days ago-” Iridis continues to brief Seraphi on the recurrence, answering the questions she assumes will be coming from millennia of experience.

The matter will be simple. Rare as recurrences are, the last was confirmed more than five thousand years ago, it is almost unheard of for one to be born during their forebear’s lifespan. And when it does happen the matter is handled with delicacy. A few Keepers, an unfortunate accident, and the universe is once again set in balance.

Seraphi soaks in the information, letting it fill her. Finally, something new, something more than meetings and pretending that everything is fine, that her children couldn’t, wouldn’t, see what she’d made them. That Balem couldn’t accept that sometimes, every once and a while, his mother could be wrong.

The bone weary ache that never eases no matter much she sleeps, how many baths she takes, lessens slightly at the thought of this girl. So young her age isn’t even worth recording yet, but Seraphi’s brain is firing again. Pathways light up, thoughts race to connect. The world, so stale and stuck, reopens.

“Who is she?” a new light fills Seraphi’s face as she interrupts Iridis.

The confusion apparent on Iridis’ avian visage drops when she sees it. How long has it been since Seraphi was actually present for a conversation? Not since that terrible fight with her eldest son, a few short centuries in the past. Iridis had sworn to Seraphi that she would never speak of what she’d seen that night.

She quickly scrolls back to the beginning of the report.

“Jupiter Jones, age 19, father deceased, lives with her immediate family on Earth, planet scheduled for harvest within the next century.”

Seraphi slowly nods and leans forward.

A spark of excitement ignites inside Iridis. Her ever present worry for Seraphi, for the sad echo of the woman she sees in her eyes, abates with that flashing hope. This is the look she had been wishing to see for so long, to see Seraphi light up with the fierce brightness that once drew in even the most powerful Entitled.

“We aren’t going to kill her.” Seraphi’s declaration stops Iridis’ planning in its tracks.

What?

“I’m sorry, my lady?” Iridis hopes she has misheard, quickly realizing her blossoming hope is far too premature. Seraphi surely understood the danger of letting the girl live. The danger it placed herself, her family in.

“I’ve been waiting, been stagnant, for so long now,” Seraphi explains, using what energy the light has given her. The long years of foggy thoughts, of forcing herself to be in the present moment has taught Seraphi to grab her moments of clarity and ride them to their end.

Iridis listens with rapt attention, having well learned to appreciate her employer’s increasingly rare moments of emotional involvement with the world.

“I’m too tired to do what needs to be done. It breaks me, to think of watching everything I’ve built, be torn down. The time it will take, it’s too long. I’ve stolen so much already. Just this once, I think, I want to listen to the universe tell me what it wants, instead of me forcing my will upon it.” Seraphi stops, thinks for a moment. This choice would affect so many. But who was she to ignore the universe when it was so clearly giving her a second chance?

“Let me see what Miss Jones is made of, before I decide what to do with her.”

The wheel, broken for so long, spins at a breakneck pace in Seraphi’s mind. So much would change now. A bubble of happiness, decadent after so long, fills her. It’s soft and fragile, but there nonetheless.

“And call Titus,” she continues, “It’s time for him to learn his purpose.”

**Author's Note:**

> A little snippet I had written for this 'verse. It doesn't really fit in with the larger piece I'm currently writing for it, but I wanted to post it. This is also the first thing I ever wrote using this tense-structure, so if you see something a little off let me know in the comments. :)


End file.
